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Blogs and the blogosphere

Definitions and reasons to care

Michael Angeles
http://urlgreyhot.com
Hello
I’m an information architect
and site developer at Lucent
Technologies’ library

An active blogger under the


pen-name, jibbajabba
(urlgreyhot.com, iaslash.org)

Contributor in the Drupal


open source blogging
platform

Business blog evangelist

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What is a weblog?
A web diary or journal My library weblog

1 Library weblogs you should know about Categories 3


A log of links to other sites or Aenean euismod pharetra enim. Proin laoreet
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Blogging
KM
pages leo. Maecenas suscipit nisi id dui. Vivamus
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Libraries
Social networks
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pulvinar ut, interdum at, sagittis non, dolor. Blogroll 4
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Crufted Lib-
rarian
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Library Nut
Read more ...
InfoGeek blog
2 > Dec, 2 2005 | Add a comment | Permalink
Blog Business
Aggregator
Business blog case studies
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lacus facilisis eros, vitae tristique ante lectus vel
lacus.

Read more ...

> Dec, 1 2005 | 10 comments | Permalink

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Some recent statistics
About 11% (50 million) of Internet users are
regular blog readers. (Pew)
Technorati is currently tracking 22.6 million blogs*
There are about 70,000 new blogs a day.
(Technorati)
Bloggers update their weblogs regularly; there are
about 700,000 posts daily, or about 29,100 blog
updates an hour. (Technorati)

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* As of 12/10, 2005; See: http://technorati.com/about/
Technorati blogosphere stats

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http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/2005_10.html
Technorati blogosphere stats

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http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/2005_10.html
Why we blog The Clue Train Manifesto
http://www.cluetrain.org/

Simple A powerful global conversation


has begun. Through the Internet,
people are discovering and
Direct & interactive inventing new ways to share
relevant knowledge with blinding
Unmediated speed. As a direct result,
markets are getting smarter—
Based on story and getting smarter faster than
telling most companies.

...

These markets are


conversations.

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A blog is really a conversation
It’s a 1 to many conversation

You publish

People comment

The conversation is recorded


on the weblog

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More precisely, it’s a cocktail party

Lots of
=
weblogs

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Cocktail party metaphor: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=5111&t=technology
The cocktail party* is the blogosphere

First I’ll tell 2 And they’ll tell And so on,


friends 2 friends and so on...

10 * A conversation thread may not follow a linear flow at a cocktail party


The blogosphere
Typical web sites allow 1-many one way
conversations (publisher to reader)

Blogs allow 1-many 2 way conversations


(via commenting & trackback)

The blogosphere (a system or networks of


blogs) allows many to many discussions -
conversations distributed over many sites
and services

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How the parts connect Sites are connected via standard
formats and processes

Common XML formats used Technologies supporting syndication


XML – publishing metadata
for publishing blog metadata
XML-RPC – for sending trackbacks

A standard protocol used for Services supporting findability


distributing conversation Search engines, aggregators &
directories
(trackback) Bloglines
Blogpulse
Blog-specific search engines/ Feedster
Google Blog Search
crawlers relationships, i.e. Pubsub
who links to whom Syndic8
Technorati

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XML (RSS) Syndication drives most of it

Blog

Bibliographic data
published as XML
(RSS, RDF, Atom)

RSS Reader RSS Reader Technorati service Feedster service

Clients read blog feed locally Services store and process blog feed
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Trackback pinging is a supporting technology

My library weblog
Blog
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Blogs in the library
Permalink | Date | Trackback URL
By jibbajabba | View edit history

Filed under: Label x, Label y

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectateur nonummy Trackback ping


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comparet, errat.

Add a comment Blog


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Post comment

Trackback ping
Trackbacks

Jibbajabba writes about blogs....


Nulla vel ipsum quis ligula porta feugiat. Nullam non odio vitae
pede congue fringilla. Praesent mi felis, posuere at, auctor in,
rutrum sed, turpis.

I just read what jibbajabba wrote about library


blogs....
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Relationships manifest in the blogosphere
Relationships are observable in indirect linking -- relationship info.
is fed back into the services and give depth to the blogosphere.

Rachel Bill
Results:
Search Search XML
Bill's blog
Bill's blog
entry +
others

XML

Direct hypertext link

Rachel's blog

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Do blogs matter?
Democratic – openness and interactivity
The pulse of the web (within a given audience)
Credibility is an issue
When authoritative – blogs are valuable for
filtering
Readership may be outpacing traditional media

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Key reasons for participating
Direct communication
bypassing the media
discussing things the media won’t
communicating directly with customers
Reputation management
Trend spotting

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Getting started
A few popular blogging software options

You install & run on a web host

WordPress, http://wordpress.org

MovableType, http://movabletype.org

Drupal, http://drupal.org

Hosted services

Blogger, http://blogger.com (free)

TypePad, http://sixapart.com (commercial)


More: http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/
Tools/Publishers/

Try some out: http://opensourcecms.com/


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Blog reading services
Server-based news readers
Bloglines, http://bloglines.com

Kinja, http://kinja.com

NewsGator, http://newsgator.com

Desktop clients
Omea Reader for PC, http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/
reader/

NetNewsWire for Mac, http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/

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Blog search services
Technorati, http://technorati.com

Blogpulse, http://blogpulse.com/

Google Blog Search, http://blogsearch.google.com/

Feedster, http://feedster.com

PubSub (subscription RSS service), http://pubsub.com

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Questions?

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